Biography

Biography

Hi. I'm Harley, the main personality behind the House of Hacks website, YouTube channel and the Hackers Field Guide books.

If I had to describe myself with one word, it'd be "maker." My whole life I've taken things apart, figured out how they worked and used them as an example in order to make my own things. Sometimes I put them back together. And sometimes they still worked.

I come by this proclivity naturally. I grew up in a family culture of making things. All four of my grandparents made things of one form or another as do both of my parents.

Generally I like to make physical things. Wood, metal, electronics and images are some of my favorite mediums, but anything is fair game. A notable exception to the "physical" criteria is my day job where I spend all my time in the virtual world of bits and bytes programming desktop applications. I've written software professionally for almost 40 years.

When I'm not making things, I'm learning. I grew up reading extensively. I remember when I was young, my Dad said "if you can read, you can do anything." By this he meant that if I needed to know how to do something, I could read up on it until I had the requisite knowledge.